


I Say His Name

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers: Infinity War - Fandom
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Avengers Infinity War Part 2 Predictions, Canon Compliant, Let's give them one, M/M, T for Cursing and Mild Violence/Reference to canon torture, Two Supersoldiers Looking for a Happy Ending, With A Fix-It Attitude, angst with happy ending, spoilers for Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 22:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14507283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: **Spoilers for Infinity War**Schoolyard to battlefield, and into the future, when the White Wolf merely wished to go home.Five times Bucky says Steve's name+One time Steve says Bucky's name





	I Say His Name

**Author's Note:**

> *** = Time jump
> 
> Warnings: Big old spoilers for Infinity Wars
> 
>  
> 
> Warning: Character Death
> 
> Rated T but references to torture, sexual relations (non graphic/non explicit/ non described) and a lot of cursing

 “Steve!” Bucky runs down the alley towards his stupid, ridiculous best friend and yanks him away from what’s shaping up to be a real brawl, right here in broad daylight.

“Let me go, Buck!” Steve roars, flailing around, still trying to knock Andrew O’Brien onto his ass. Andrew O’Brien has thirty pounds on Steve, easy, though, and Andrew O’Brien is three years younger than Steve, so four years younger than Bucky, and Bucky wants to avoid two outcomes:

  1. Steve gets his ass kicked by a younger, stronger kid.
  2. Bucky gets a reputation for kicking the ass of younger, smaller kids who pick on his best friend.



Bucky’s successful in pulling Steve away, and drags his dumb ass home and plunks him down on the threadbare sofa at the Barnes’s residence. He digs up some hydrogen peroxide and rubs it none too gently on Steve’s knuckles which are skinned and bleeding.

“What’dya do this time, punk?” Bucky mutters under his breath.

“Nothin’, jerk,” Steve sniffs defiantly.

“Tryna put me into an early grave?” Bucky suggests. “Want me to be dead at thirteen, want my gravestone to say ‘Stevie Rogers did this?’ Huh?”

“He was pickin’ on first graders, Buck,” Steve protests. Bucky looks up at him, and Steve’s backlit by the afternoon sun enough to look holy, and every thought James Barnes has next is anything but holy.

He mutters something about _you can’t save the whole world, Stevie,_ and when his best friend mutters back, “I sure as hell can _try,_ Buck,” it does absolutely nothing to change the fact that Bucky has just realized that he feels about his best friend the way he’s supposed to feel about girls.

***

_Oh God, I’m going to die here, oh God, Becca’s not even going to remember me, and Ma’s gonna cry, and Dad probably won’t even find out for a year, stupid sonofabitch, and Steve, oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Stevie, sweetheart, I never tol’ you, woulda died before I hurt you for any reason, oh fuck, doesn’t seem like a great reason now, Stevie, shoulda been Stevie Barnes –_

Maybe it’s because he’s been screaming for him inside his head ( _Lord, in your mercy, please make sure that didn’t come out of my mouth even for a second, don’t want to give Zola the satisfaction of knowing there’s someone in my life worth breaking for_ ) for a week straight, but Bucky could swear he sees his best friend suddenly.

“Steve?” Bucky pants, the sight of little Steven Rogers swimming before his eyes in the middle of this hellhole. _Steve can’t be here,_ he thinks nonsensically. _It’s too cold, he’ll catch sick, Ma Rogers will have my head._

“Let’s get you out of here, Buck.” Steve’s hands are the same size, but the rest of him isn’t. Bucky blinks, boutta thousand times, trying to make sense of this giant of a man with Steve’s hands, and Steve’s face, and Steve’s voice.

He freaks for about five seconds, thinking that this is just another of Zola’s tortures dreamt up by his own brain, but then it all clicks. This is Steve, Steve’s here to rescue him, Steve’s here to fix this and make it all stop hurting.

“Steve,” Bucky whimpers, and when he gets off the table, he clutches to him in a way that probably would have bruised his peach-like skin not even eight months ago, but Steve hugs him tight right back.

 “Thought you were dead, Buck,” he confesses, voice almost a sob while he buries his face in Bucky’s neck, and after weeks of nothing but pain, it feels almost too good.

 _Maybe this is a dream after all,_ he thinks. _Maybe I’m dying_. “Thought you were smaller,” he mutters. And then they’re running, up and out, and they don’t stop running for a long time, running against fate and time and Nazis.

They don’t stop running or fighting, but Bucky sure as hell wants to when he meets the dame who might actually deserve Steve Rogers, who might actually deserve him in all the ways he doesn’t.

(And when he falls, he doesn’t scream Steve’s name. It seems wrong, somehow, too much like a goodbye. The whole time he’s falling, Bucky thinks, _I’m so glad he didn’t jump down after me, the jackass, he’d probably tell gravity to fuck right off and let him fly_ and then the ground reaches up to meet him, and Bucky no longer thinks. He doesn’t have the luxury to think after that).

***

“I knew him,” the Asset mutters, not fighting the restraints. “The man on the bridge. I knew him.” It looks up, plaintively at its master.

(Its master looked like the man on the bridge, once upon a time. It had been taught to love him, too).

Its master gives the order to wipe the Asset, and it understands that it has made a mistake, that it has interfered with the perfect mission of Hydra, its glorious purpose. It must be broken down once more until it learns what it means to serve.

The mouthguard fits in, and the Asset experiences a surge in non-compliance even as it accepts the rubber between its teeth (it hadn’t once, after a 1991 mission, and it had taken three weeks for it to grow its tongue back, bitten clear off while screaming for the memory of a small, clever man with a stupid mouth and a kind heart). The non-compliance is mental, not physical, but the Asset worries that its master can sense it all the same.

 _Bucky?_ The man on the bridge’s voice echoes in its head even now, over and over again. _Bucky?_

_I knew him. I knew him. **I know him.**_

The machine roars to life, but Bucky’s given a vision of a perfect face with blue eyes and twice-broken nose, and around his mouthguard, Bucky Barnes screams a single word:

“Steve!”

***

The holo-transmitter beeps cheerfully as it connects across thousands of miles, awakening the device of a renegade superhero.

Bucky holds out his beads the way Shuri had taught him, and he settles his ass down on a nice comfy rock while his favorite goat, Tony (yeah, he might be unstable, but he still has a sense of humor), rubs its little horns up against his side affectionately.

“I can’t pet you and look at the display,” Bucky points out apologetically. “Only got the one arm, see?” The goat bleats irritated and trots off. “Sorry, Stark II,” he shouts after the goat.

Then, the line connects, and there’s a tired sigh, the one only his favorite little drama queen could make.

“Steve?” Bucky asks, cheerfully. He examines the blue screen projected by his bracelet and frowns. “Steve, buddy, why can’t I see you?”

“Why would I be able to see you?” Steve’s deep voice cuts through the line, and Bucky shivers even though it’s easily 85 degrees and perfect outside. “It’s a flip phone.”

“You aren’t using the bracelet T’Challa gave you?” Bucky asks curiously. “C’mon, Stevie, use the bracelet.”

“Sam said it might…” Steve trails off and coughs awkwardly. Bucky knows that noise; it happens right around when Steve Rogers turns a brighter red than the strips of the American flag.

“Sam said what, Rogers?” Bucky waits patiently, and thank God for his knock-off serum improved hearing, because he catches what Steven mutters next:

“Sam-said-it-might-lower-my-sperm-count.”

“Wilson said _what_?” Bucky crows, laughing. “And you believed him? Stevie, swe—” Bucky coughs awkwardly this time. He almost called Steve sweetheart.

He hadn’t called him sweet anything since the night before he fell in the 40’s, when they had told themselves they were just two guys trying to stay warm and sane behind enemy lines. Plenty of the guys did it, all the Howling Commandoes were okay with it or doing it themselves, but Bucky had known. It was different with them, or at least with him, because guys that got each other off in the quiet dark night didn’t wake up the next morning wrapped around each other, noses pressed up behind ears, ears pressed over hearts, hands clasped. Fellas who were just helping each other out didn’t cry even a single tear when they kissed goodbye before leaving the private tent, fingers lingering on dog tags, foreheads pressed together for even a second longer. Fellas who were just being soldiers trying to stay warm and sane didn’t kiss each other goodbye, full stop.

Steven Rogers has always been too smart for his own good, so Bucky knows Steve heard the aborted word, knows Steve understands what he almost called him.

“You’ll have to show me how to use it when I get home,” Steve says, softer now. In the background of the call, Bucky can hear Nat screaming that she brought Chinese food, and he can hear Wilson scream back over the definition of safe house, and how responsible assassins should be quiet when entering one.

Bucky’s stomach clenches though, and he doesn’t even laugh at Falcon and Black Widow’s mini-fight, because Steve said – “Wakanda’s home now?”

“Nah,” Steve clears his throat, and ain’t it wonderful to hear the Brooklyn vowels back in his perfect, stupid mouth. “No, Buck. You’re home. You’ve always been my home. You know that.”

“Sweet thing.” Bucky doesn’t stop himself, then. He doesn’t care. “You come home then, okay? Or I’ll drag your ass back here myself.”

“Couldn’t stay away for the world, Buck. Gotta go though, or Sam will eat all the egg rolls. He’s worse than you are, I swear. ”

“Punk.”

“Jerk.”

***

Captain America comes home – but maybe he isn’t Captain America, anymore, and Bucky’s glad for him, glad one of them seems to be learning how to not fight for causes they don’t believe in anymore, the little spitfire from Brooklyn finally learning – but he brings a war with him.

Bucky fights in it, of course, because it’s that or let the world end around him. And T’Challa does give him a really cool gun, and an arm that Shuri assures him is “dope” (and ain’t that something, that he’s lived all this time and lost so many people, but he has so many people to fight for now: T’Challa, out of loyalty for his unnecessary kindness; Shuri, out of love for a girl who his baby sister would have adored; Okoye, out of respect for the greatest warrior alive; and Steve Rogers, always Stevie from the block, Bucky will _always_ fight for the golden boy of Brooklyn, the punk with skinned knuckles and blood in his teeth and everything James Barnes has ever loved captured in a too-perfect heart)

The battle goes to shit, and then it goes a little better, and then it goes to absolute shit, again. There’s too much information coming from too many directions, and Bucky doesn’t really understand it when a detonation similar to a nuclear weapon cuts through the trees but passes right through him.

 _Vision._ Vision fell. Wanda must have killed him –

Which means it’s over. But then the explosion rolls backwards, and Bucky feels like he did on the train, like he did watching Peggy steal away Steve Rogers, like he did on a falling aircraft when he couldn’t remember his own damn name, like he did when he thought he was going to die feet away from his best friend under a hero’s gun –

Something awful is about to happen.

“On my location!” Steve had screamed, and Bucky pulls up the GPS tracker and sprints in the right direction.

He feels…wrong, somehow.

It feels like those dreams where you can run and run, but the ground swallows up your feet, and you can never move fast enough.

Bucky has to get to Steve; if he gets to Steve, it’ll be okay. Steve pulled him off the table, Steve knew him when no one else did, Steve broke his programming, Steve believed in him when the world had leagues of evidence against him, Steve, Steve, Steve –

“Steve?”

Bucky sees him, maybe fifteen feet away, but everything h– _no, this doesn’t hurt_ , he tells himself. _I know what pain is. This isn’t pain._

Then he locks eyes with Steve, and the golden boy, his golden boy, looks so sad, heartbroken and confused, and that. That hurts. Right there. Almost a century into this friendship, and his Stevie finds a new way to hurt him every time.

 _We didn’t have enough time,_ he thinks, nonsensically, gun dropping to the ground as his arm disappears, his other stupid fucking arm, the one that he still _had,_ goddamnit.

Stevie doesn’t say his name back, but maybe he does, because everything goes black, and Stevie’s the last thing he sees, Stevie’s always the last goddamn thing he sees, even when his eyes aren’t his own and –

_We didn’t have enough time._

***

Buck blinks back into existence. It was like he had just closed his eyes, had just seen Steve reaching out for him, fruitlessly, a pattern of theirs, and then he opens his eyes, and he’s standing on some weird planet and there are a lot of crying people.

“This some kind of a funeral?” He mutters.

“ _Bucky_?”

“Steve,” Bucky turns and stares because he’d know that voice out of a thousand talkin at once, and there he is, his golden boy, Steven Rogers himself, Irish bastard, grinning at him like Bucky’s done something clever, and not just opened his eyes.

“Buck.” He’s being squished by 250 pounds of supersoldier, and it takes him a solid second before he remembers to hug him back. “Oh God, Bucky,” Steve’s hands tighten around Bucky’s waist, and Bucky’s gripping his shoulders back with equal strength, the arm T’Challa gave him knowing instinctively how pressure is too much – a big change from the one Hydra soldered onto his shoulder – and Steve is sobbing, honestly sobbing into Bucky’s neck.

“Why you crying, you big sap?” Bucky laughs, roughly. “Only been gone a few seconds.”

“A year,” Steve whispers, and he tucks his face into the space underneath Bucky’s ear, like he did when he was little and huddling closer to him for warmth. “You been gone a year, Buck.”

“Oh. Well, fuck.” Bucky blinks, and his hand comes up instinctively to twine fingers through Steve’s hair, darker than it ever was, longer too, but still smelling of something distinctively Steven Grant Rogers – gunpowder and grit, vanilla and baking soda, green and gold and everything fucking good in this stupid universe.

“Yeah. Fuck,” Steve laughs too, wetly. “Fucking hell, Bucky.”

“The mouth on you, Rogers,” Bucky pulls out of the hug to smile at him. “Oughta wash that thing out with soap.”

“Shut up, jerk,” Steve raises his hand, but not to hit him – to hold Bucky’s chin tenderly, his fingers sliding up to rest against his cheek. Bucky turns his nose into Steve’s hand, and nuzzles into it.

“Punk,” Bucky whispers, tears of his own forming finally. He didn’t feel the most recent year of separation, but he feels all the others, and it’s too much, the universe asks too much of them.

There’s a hiss of pneumatics, and Bucky twists his head slightly to look at Iron Man, his helmet off, thrusters keeping him off the ground as he stares at them.

“You two gonna kiss or something?” Tony asks, smiling. Bucky rolls his eyes at him.

“No, you perv,” Bucky says at the same time Steve says: “Yeah, I think we will.”

“ _What_?” Bucky looks back at Steve, his hand still soft on his face, and then Steven Grant Rogers himself is kissing him, a century old semi-stable old man, his lips chapped and tasting faintly of rust and blood and something a little too perfect for James Buchanan Barnes.

The kiss, their first in this millennium, goes on for what feels like an infinity, and when they break apart, Bucky feels like he fell off the back of the train again.

They help clean up and get folks sorted out, and a really awesome wizard helps them send people back to their respective homes, and when the wizard – “I’m a doctor,” he’d insisted to Bucky, “and a master of the mystical arts,” and the doctor-wizard had been real unamused when Bucky called him ‘Harry Potter’ – turns to Bucky and Steve, Steve Rogers takes his hand as if he’d never had a chance to let go in the first place.

“Where to, Buck?” He asks, shyly, a blush high on his cheeks.

“Well, I had a nice farm on Wakanda,” Bucky suggests. “Owned some livestock. And what’s one more old goat for me to take care of?” Steve sticks his tongue out at him, but he puts it away when Bucky leans in lightning-quick to kiss him on the whiskered cheek.

Dr. Strange smiles at them kindly and does something weird with his hands, a portal zipping open (Bucky in 1934, the one who consumed pulp fiction novels like they were popcorn, would have lost his shit, but Bucky from 2018 has lost his shit too many times to let it show on his face, at least) and the fields of Wakanda appear on the other side.

“Ready, jerk?” Steve asks.

Bucky walks through without thinking twice, without bothering to answer out loud, tugging his jackass of a best friend behind him, into the happiest ending either of them could have ever hoped for.

**Author's Note:**

> (First Stucky fic, at one point I had read like 15k fics out of this ship, not even exaggerating, so it's nice to finally contribute :P)


End file.
